


Respite

by Astrid_B_Caine



Category: Starsky & Hutch
Genre: Aftermath, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Compliant, Episode: s03e08 The Plague, Implied Relationships, M/M, Partnership, Podfic Welcome, Possibly Pre-Slash, Shippy Gen, Short One Shot, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-22
Updated: 2016-04-22
Packaged: 2018-06-03 21:00:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6626098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astrid_B_Caine/pseuds/Astrid_B_Caine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written in April 1996.<br/>Published in a slash zine called The Fix 18, which was published in May 1998. <br/>http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Fix_%28Starsky_and_Hutch_zine%29#Issue_18</p><p>Summary:<br/>While Hutch is recovering from the Plague, Dr Judith tries to have a conversation with Starsky. It doesn't go as she expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Respite

It was Judith’s fourth coffee break and still he was sitting there, unwavering, staring intently through the glass-window at his partner.

In a way the love and devotion that she’d seen between the two men had been overshadowed by the sheer desperation to stay alive. They’d both been fighting for their lives - even though Hutch was the one in the hospital bed and Starsky was as healthy as any man could possibly be. She had no doubt that that would have changed if Hutch hadn’t made it. She had no idea why or how, she just knew.

“Coffee?” She approached the taut back.

Starsky was sitting with the back of the chair between his legs and his arms using the top for a holding bar. He looked up for a second, letting go of his precious burden behind the glass, and then dismissed her. “Thanks.”

“Mind if I sit for a moment?” Judith grabbed the other chair and didn’t wait for an answer. It wasn’t coming anyway.

Judith stared at the two of them for a little while, sipping her coffee. Hutch in there, calm peaceful, serum starting to fight off the illness inside him. He still looked like death, but he was healing. Starsky out here, rigid with tension, adrenaline pumping through his system to keep him awake after his 72 hour stretch to save Hutch’s life. The man’s energies had been exhausted and still he was sitting here, instead of zonking out on a bed somewhere.

“How’s it goin’?” He never took his eyes off his partner, but at least acknowledged Judith’s presence with the question.

“It’s going,” she said calmly. “All the critical cases have begun treatment. Now we’re starting on the rest.”

“Callander?”

“Just got out of surgery. He’s perfectly fine. Too bad there aren’t two of him. We could use more of his blood.”

Starsky spared her one glance, reluctantly. “One’s enough. He’s a killer.”

Judith merely shrugged. It had never mattered to her who or what this guy was. Diseases in her experience didn’t respect any social or moral boundaries. “We could use more to work with.”

“But Hutch is gonna be okay?” Starsky asked, almost not as a question.

“Yes. It just takes time.”

“Time, I got.”

She studied the dark haired man’s profile for a while, as they sat in silence.

Something about those two was intangible, uncapturable. She contemplated that maybe they should make a movie about people like them sometime. Two people, fighting for each other’s lives; always fighting together. There was something inspirational in that. In fact she saw a movie like that once. What was it now?

She followed Starsky’s gaze and reflected upon Hutch’s blond hair and his serene sleeping face. Like an angel in some ways, though she doubted he was _that_ special. She’d been able to spend a little bit more time with Hutch at the hospital, while Starsky had been out hunting, and found the man easier to grasp than his partner, less cryptic.

 _Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid_. Yes, that was it. Yes, they were definitely like that. Better even, as they were real. And she had been a part of their reality, for a little while.

“Why don’t you go get some sleep, Dave? There’s nothing you can do here.”

“Can’t.”

His short, staccato answers were probably a sign of his exhaustion, she supposed.

“Why not?”

“Hutch,” he said shortly. “He needs me.”

“He’ll be out of it for at least another 12 hours from the looks of him,” she said in order to reassure him. “He would want you-”

She stopped short when Starsky suddenly looked at her, eyes piercing right through to the soul.

“I mean, he won’t notice if you’re gone for a few hours,” she finished when she got her tongue back.

“He’ll know.” Starsky was back to staring through the window, almost as if he were sending energy toward his partner to get well.

“How? He’s sleeping.”

“ _I’ll_ know. That’s how.”

Judith took that as a given. She had glimpsed something of what was between them in the short time she’d been here, and was of the opinion that one should not mess with a working system. And their system worked.

“Judith,” Starsky said so low it was almost inaudible. “Hutch likes ya.”

She nodded, though she doubted he noticed.

“I like ya. So that’s okay, right?”

“Sure,” she said softly, at a loss as to where he was going with this, but patient enough to let him get there.

“He’s gonna ask ya to stay. He’s like that, you know?”

She couldn’t help but smile a bit. All three of them had been flirting with each other while out on mission. But as soon as Hutch was hospitalised, Starsky had stopped putting any energy into anything other than saving Hutch’s life. Hutch on the other hand, had been flirting with her until he was too weak to manage a smile.

Starsky sucked in a breath. “You’re gonna say no.”

She was captivated by his gaze for two of the longest seconds in her life. His eyes held a plea and a warning.

“Y’dig?”

She nodded. She had never considered staying on for either of them anyway. They were too intense. It had been an adventure for a little while, but she wanted to go back home to Alabama, lock herself up in her lab for 3 months and enjoy the memories, get away from the real thing. “Sure.”

His eyes said thank you and he was freed to devote all his energy to his partner again.

72 Hours without sleep and the guy was still going on. He’d collapse if he kept this up much longer. Not that she had had more sleep than Starsky in that time, but at least she had work to do. His work was done.

Only he didn’t seem to think so.

“I don’t know why you guys do it,” she suddenly wondered out loud. “I mean, you put yourself into these situations most people just want to run away from. I’m sure this isn’t the first time both of you ended up in the hospital...”

Starsky shrugged at that. Marginally. He didn’t seem inclined to answer.

Her focus wandered off to the sleeping blond. “I mean, _how_ do you keep this kind of thing up?”

“Guts,” Starsky stated.

She nodded. “Yes, you need courage. The kind of courage that I--.”

“No.”

She found him suddenly staring at her, as if he couldn’t believe that he’d have to explain this.

He pointed toward his partner. “I handle his, he handles mine. Hutch’n me - we’re a team. That’s how we survive.” Then he totally dismissed her.

Her coffee break was almost over.

“Listen,” she said as she put her chair back against the wall. “You look like you’re about to go through that window if we’re not careful. If you won’t go get any sleep, you can go inside and stay with him.”

The second she’d spoken he was up from his seat. He had already made it through the first door when she caught up with him. If he hadn’t been so worn out, she would never have been able to catch him in time.

“No, not like this. You have to scrub first. We’re going to put you in a mask again.”

“He’s still contagious?”

“Maybe,” she tugged him by the arm back through the first door. “And maybe you’re carrying something that he can’t fight at the moment. Better to be safe.”

Starsky was standing there like a compass trying very hard not to give into the polar force.

She grabbed his arm again. “C’mon.”

  
  


¤¤¤¤¤

  
  


“More blood?” Hutch asked as she came in for the umpteenth check-up.

“You’re up,” she said and placed all her stuff on the table. “How’re you feeling?”

“Like someone’s squeezing my hand to death.” He grinned as he said it, despite his condition.

They both looked toward the curly head, bowed over the back of the chair again, face almost completely hidden by the surgical mask. Starsky’s latexly gloved hand was holding firmly onto Hutch’s.

“How does it feel?” she asked softly as she continued to take a sample.

He kept up his smile as long as he could. “How long?”

“Fourteen hours or more,” she answered the unfinished question. She reflected she was getting good at disciphering their code. “Keeps falling asleep on the chair here. We tried to put him into a bed, but each time he woke up and insisted on staying here. He’s going to have one enormous kink in his back when he does wake up...”

She finished up and followed Hutch’s gaze. He wasn’t on his guard like most men were, probably for a number of reasons. It allowed her to see the love that lived between them, that had been hidden beneath Starsky’s desperation earlier on.

“He say anything?” Hutch asked after a few seconds.

“Not much.”

“Figures,” he mumbled and the smile only grew warmer. “He’s not very articulate when he’s tired.”

“Hmm,” she nodded. “This probably wasn’t one of his better days either.”

He looked up at her, eyes bright with the illness and the healing process. “It was his finest day, Judith.” He blinked up at her, and effectively pinned her to the spot. “So what did he say?”

“I asked him why you two go through this...” She ran a hand through Starsky’s curls. “He said it’s because of your ‘guts’.”

Hutch almost chuckled. “Right. He handles mine, an’ I handle his.” He seemed to follow every stroke that her hand made through his partner’s curls. It was almost as if he were envious of her ability to reach them, while he couldn’t.

“Did he tell you that?”

“No,” he said softly, and tried to stifle a yawn. “Course not.”

She’d been right about them. Especially about Starsky. His devotion to his partner overrode everything else. She wondered what they both did with that kind of intensity between them. It must be hard to live that way.

It was also a good thing she was getting out. She didn’t think she would be up to handling their ‘guts’, or was inclined to hand out her own to be handled by them. Either of them.

“What you have here is really special,” she mumbled under her breath, unable to stop herself. “‘Butch’ and ‘Sundance’.”

“What?” Hutch asked, almost lost in the curls and his crushed hand and fighting off sleep.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said easily. “You just get better.”

He looked up at her, slowly, almost lazily. “Judith?”

Even in his present condition he was probably one of the two most handsome men she’d ever seen. Starsky was the other.

“Will ya give me chance, when I get out of here?” He seduced her with the blueness of his eyes. “Stay and I’ll show ya how wonderful I can be when I’m not running a hundred and six.”

She grinned. “He warned me you’d ask me to stay.”

“So what else did he warn you about?” Hutch asked easily.

She merely smiled as she packed up her stuff again, and ran one gloved hand through Hutch’s blond bangs.

“Maybe we should put another bed in here,” she suggested finally.

Hutch’s tired eyes became more alert at that. “Sounds like fun.”

“Not for me; for him.” She winked at him and then turned to leave. One last moment of running her fingers through Dave Starsky’s curls, and she knew it was the end.

Next time it would be them and her again. Not the three of them, like it had been for these unforgettable few days in her life. They’d be on their usual guard, and probably both will start to make those macho passes at her again. She enjoyed that, took it for what it was. Basically it meant nothing.

But for one moment in time, she’d been allowed to handle their guts. She could see the attraction of such closeness, but her decision was still the same. For them it was their natural state of being. For her, it had been an adventure. She would enjoy this memory and leave the two men to each other’s care.

  
  


 

 


End file.
